ARC

Abstract

The competition among wireless data service providers brings in an option for the customers to switch their providers, due to unsatisfactory service or otherwise. However, the existing resource management algorithms for wireless networks fail to fully capture the far-reaching impact of this competitiveness. From this perspective, we propose an integrated admission and rate control (ARC) framework for CDMA based wireless data networks. The admission control is at the session (macro) level while the rate control is at the link layer packet (micro) level. The ARC framework is based on a novel game theoretic formulation which defines non-cooperative games between the service providers and the customers. A user's decision to leave or join a provider is based on a finite set of strategies. A service provider can also construct its game strategy set so as to maximize the utility (revenue) yet attaining its target churn rate (the probability of users leaving the network). We show that the pure strategy Nash equilibrium can be established for both under-loaded and fully-loaded systems such that the providers have clearly defined admission criteria as outcome from this game. Users are categorized into multiple classes and offered differentiated services based on the price they pay and the service degradation they can tolerate. We show that the proposed ARC framework significantly increases the provider's revenue and also successfully offers differentiated QoS to the users.